


I can hear you.

by millygal



Series: Stydia's comment fic meme [7]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Introspection, lead up to season two moment of happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 17:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11190162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millygal/pseuds/millygal
Summary: Sadistic pleasures are not limited to those without a soul who possess no conscience.





	I can hear you.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelus2hot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelus2hot/gifts).



> Written for angelus2hot's prompt - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel/Buffy, the closer you get. 
> 
> It's been so long since I wrote any Buffy that I thoroughly enjoyed this!!!
> 
> THANK YOU to jj1564 for her tireless beta work!! And Stir for her read throughs and amazing comments!

Angel can hear his Demon raging against the love in Buffy’s touch and there’s a small part of him, soul or not, that thoroughly enjoys the creature’s anguish. He doesn’t love the Slayer simply because she irritates his Demon, that would be beyond crass and cruel, but it doesn’t hurt either.

When Buffy touches him there’s a sense of calm he’s never before known. Not when he was human; a wastrel with no plans or priorities other than to piss off his father with his drinking and whoring, nor when he lost his soul and became Angelus, Darla’s playmate in evil and Spike’s mentor in mayhem.

Buffy brings him a moment's peace from all the torment that he _still_ feels for those lives cut short by fangs and claws and a disregard for anything but the hunt.

As Angel lays atop his covers, Buffy’s head pillowed on his chest, the Vampire can hear his girlfriend’s heartbeat. It thrums through him, vibrates all the way down to his bones, makes him feel like he has his own pulse for the first time in over two hundred years.

Underneath the echo of her heart tap-tap-tapping away beneath her ribs is another far more disturbing but no less enjoyable sound; Angelus is howling. Raging against the cage in Angel’s head. Tearing at the bars like he thinks he can crush them if only he could get a grip of them.

Sadistic pleasures are not limited to those without a soul who possess no conscience, evil resides in all living things. The only evil Angel allows himself these days _is_ the spark of amusement at Angelus’ fury.

Buffy snuggles in closer, tucks her head in the crook of Angel’s arm and sighs in her sleep, and Angel hums contentedly.

The creature residing in the back of Angel’s mind tilts his head and listens, stops beating his already bloodied fists against imagined metal, and waits. For what, Angel doesn’t know, but he feels a sudden stab of pain.

Dead centre of his chest, like someone’s just sunk a piece of sharpened wood into his sternum, and for the briefest moment Angel _sees_ Angelus smile.

Brushing it off as a payback for all of his whispered words of devotion given freely to the Slayer on dark nights huddled in Sunnydale’s many cemeteries, Angel thinks Angelus is simply playing games in there. Poking and prodding, looking for weaknesses.

Until he hears Angelus laugh and whisper. “Soon.”

 

 

  
Fin.


End file.
